Key of Living Fire (The Sword of the Dragon) (32 page)

The rivers’ rush was gentle on his ears as he walked to the bank and knelt, cupping his hand in the ice-cold water. He quenched his thirst and then stepped into the river. His legs prickled as if stuck with a thousand needles. Then the sword of the dragon warmed his blood. He stepped up the opposite embankment and sidestepped a curious cactus about four feet tall. The cactus had two branches that shot at right angles from the trunk, and several oblong orange fruits hung from them.

His stomach rumbled, and he smiled as he picked a fruit off the cactus and broke it upon a stone. The fruit’s flesh was cream in color, and as he took a bite he relished the pear-like flavor. But the aftertaste of overcooked beef—

He swallowed before his taste buds could fully object. “It isn’t as good as it looks, Seivar.” He moved aside as the bird waddled toward the fruit and slashed it with its beak. Its eyes closed as it swallowed, then it dug into the fruit with a vengeance. Before long it cleaned out the skin and flew across the second river, perching on a boulder along the way toward the exit tunnel.

Ilfedo splashed into the river. The water came to his chest and he half-swam the twenty feet to the other side. As he sloshed out of the water, the sword of the dragon steamed his clothes dry. Something splashed behind, and he looked back at the river. A fat black fish swam against the river current. Its large round eyes gleamed with blue light, so bright that he glanced away.

He walked up the bowl and the Nuvitor leaped off its boulder to circle him. The bird landed gently on his shoulder and cooed in his ear. He continued toward the tunnel, glancing back once again at the white-gold dragon. In the blue light of this cavern it turned almost silver. “It will probably remain there forever, Seivar. Forever, that is, until the end of this world . . .” Ilfedo flexed the fingers of his right hand. His pointer finger was now freed of the nasty ring. Yet would the ring’s loss prevent him from finding the dragon’s agent? No sense in mulling over that which was already done.

Holding his sword before his face, he set off into the tunnel. Great claw marks had carved the tunnel walls, and they angled steeply upward so that he was forced to his knees. He pulled himself up the tunnel, knowing that, at last, he would be among friends and allies.

15

WHIMLY JANVEL

T
he ground trembled and a roar rent the air. Oganna started from her sleep and looked about. The roar sounded as if it had come from the volcano, not from some beast.

“The volcano is very violent,” Ombre said as he sat beside her in the tent’s doorway. “More violent than anyone told me it could be.”

She raised herself on her elbows. She’d been sleeping on her stomach. “You’ve been up for a while?” The viper slithered through the grass and coiled around her arm until its head rested on her shoulder.

He nodded. “I had trouble sleeping last night.”

Again the ground shook; the volcano rumbled. Caritha stirred and groggily inquired what was happening. “No need to worry,” Ombre told her. “The volcano is having a bad day.”

The air was rent with a sound equivalent to that of a bolt of lightning cracking a large tree—only this was a million times more powerful, and it was not a tree. The volcano’s crest cracked, and an ocean of fresh red-yellow lava spilled out. The ground quaked—then all grew silent.

They waited in hushed uncertainty. “Well,” Ombre said when a few minutes had passed, “that was strong—and disturbing—”

He stood, but never finished his sentence. The land to the south divided. A crack in the ground cut through the western forests. The low ground ahead of them sank, taking a forest of trees out of sight into the opened chasm.

The horses whinnied.

“Whoa!” Ombre began gathering their things, packing them back into their bags. “Let’s not stick around this place. Shall we, ladies?”

Caritha closed the tent’s flap. “Let me change first.”

“There might not be time,” Ombre warned.

But his words were lost on her, for she emerged shortly and smiled at him.

Together they gathered the rest of their things, packed their gear, and saddled the Evenshadows. Then, vaulting onto the horses’ backs, they raced from that place. But they were too late to escape. The ground beneath them twisted, rose, and broke up. Horses and all tumbled toward the swamp as the higher ground of the western forests slid away toward the volcano.

Oganna regained her balance as the quake ended. She looked back, and her jaw dropped wide open in astonishment, for she could see that a very large portion of the forest was buried. A broad and deep canyon sliced into the fertile ground, and swamp water was sloshing in its lowest depressions, though she and her companions had landed a good distance away from the canyon.

The viper stretched out its neck and swallowed hard. “Psst! Mistresss, this isss not good.”

“From here on,” Ombre said as he pulled Caritha from the mud, “the horses would be of little use. We will set them loose here, and they will find their way home.” He pulled a pack off his mount’s saddle and began picking a few items from the other bag still remaining on the saddle. “Unless you want to feel like you’re carrying lead, take only the essentials.”

They unpacked their things, then slapped the Evenshadows’ haunches and bade them speed home. Oganna watched them go with reservation. She relied on Avernardi, and on his back she always felt secure. Avernardi stopped to glance back when he reached the high ground. Wind whipped his silver mane to billow behind his neck. He snorted before wheeling about and disappearing into the trees.

“Well,” she said, “that’s that.”

“Indeed.” Ombre collected a few scattered items and added them to his pack.

Caritha had gotten the worst of the swamp’s muck, for she’d landed in the thick of it. She wiped her slime-covered face with her soaked sleeve and shook her shoulders in disgust. “Yuck!”

Ombre chuckled, and Oganna’s aunt turned on him with a bit of fire in her gaze.

“What?”

He raised both hands as if to defend himself. “Now, I don’t want you to stab me, or do anything else—painful.” He laughed. “Consider that I have been the perfect gentleman—”

Caritha’s face broke into the hint of a smile. One of her gentle hands pinched his chin, then squeezed his cheeks.

Into her hand Ombre chuckled again. “It’s okay. I know that it was important for you to freshen up. And you looked, well—” His voice grew suddenly serious. “You looked beautiful.”

Her face flushed and she withdrew her hand.

Oganna faced the swamp and surveyed its murky waters and dark terrain. The clouds of ash rising from the volcano almost hid the rising sun from view so that the mountain and the swamp around it were still shrouded in relative darkness. She could pick out streams and pools of water intersecting around tufts of tall grass. Narrow and muddy land covered most of the area, and gnarled trees pushed up to interlace in a dense canopy overhead. If habitable land lay in this direction, it was beyond that volcano.

“Once we enter that swamp, we will probably have great difficulty making it to the other side. But if we keep a straight path to the mountain’s base, then we should be able to skirt around it to the opposite side.” Ombre headed into the swamp and cut the swamp vines out of the way with his sword while they followed.

Before long all that connected them to the world outside the swamp was a tunnellike path cut out behind them. The swamp waters’ depths were impossible to calculate, so they did not set foot in them. Instead, they walked along tree roots and the occasional boulders that pierced the water’s surface. The foliage thinned out somewhat. Creating a path through the foliage became less of a problem than finding the nearest tree roots to step on.

Several hours of this treacherous hike brought them to the base of a large elm tree. A raised bit of grassy land surrounded the tree, and its roots stuck through it into the swamp. Oganna swatted at a swarm of mosquitoes. The insects grew peskier the farther into the swamp they went.

Ombre and Caritha sprinted ahead of her to a dry grassy spot of ground. They rolled the packs off each other’s backs and knelt, fishing out bread rolls and jam. Not particularly appetizing to her, but they would suffice.

Another mosquito stung her arm and she swatted it, then brushed the dead insect off as she leaned against a massive log beside the water. But the log slid into the water. She grabbed a hanging vine just in time to keep from falling into the murky swamp, and the log twisted its end out of the water to look at her with beady green eyes. It looked like some kind of alligator. Instinct told her to reach for Avenger in case the reptile turned on her, then she thought the better of it. There was no telling what other sorts of predators roamed this place, and the flashing of a glowing sword could bring their attention right to her. Better to remain inconspicuous.

Regaining her balance, she ran to join her companions. As she sat in the soft, dry grass, she swatted another mosquito and bit into a roll that Caritha handed her. “Uncle Ombre?”

He looked at her, his cheeks stuffed with bread.

“How much longer must we endure this?” she said.

He harrumphed and thumbed over his shoulder to the swamp ahead of them. Partitions of thick green foliage hung from the trees that hid the sunlight. The swamp waters formed pools that melded into one another as far as she could see in the dimness. “We haven’t made much headway. I’d say we are less than halfway to the mountain.” He finished his roll and held his hand over his mouth as he burped. “Sorry, ladies.”

Caritha shook her head, and Oganna laughed quietly. In the swamp water she distinguished a pair of lidless yellow eyes. The black pupils seemed to rove over her with disturbing persistence, like a predator eyeing its prey. She stood and turned to point it out to Ombre, but in that instant four skinny arms breached the water’s surface and pulled her feet out from under her. She grabbed on to the tree’s roots and refused to let go as the arms threatened to tear her limb from limb.

The eyes now rose out of the water, and she saw a hairy, slime-covered face atop a reptilian body. Gators now gathered around to watch, though she noted that they kept their distance from her captor. Two more arms extended from the creature’s body. It had now risen almost twenty feet out of the water, and she saw that multicolored scales shielded its chest.

There was a commotion to her right as Ombre and Caritha stabbed at the arms with their swords. The creature slipped its humanlike hands around their ankles and dangled them in the air. Its grip around Oganna tightened, and she felt another arm wrap around her stomach. She gasped for breath and struggled to maintain her hold on the tree’s roots, but they were wet and slippery.

She lost her grip with one hand, and her legs submerged in the water. The creature gurgled, and the water foamed around its arms, emitting a stench that made her gag. The thing seemed to be laughing at her, almost like a master puppeteer pulling the puppet’s strings. Using her free hand, she slid the boomerang from under her belt and stabbed one of the arms. This, she assumed, would cause the creature to release her. Instead, it dropped Ombre and Caritha and then wrapped the arms it had used to hold them around her chest!

The wound she had inflicted healed at a rapid rate, and the added strength of the creature’s other arms wore her down. Her arm ached and her lungs burned. The creature jerked her and then pulled again. Despite everything she’d tried, she lost her grip on a tree root, and the creature lifted her into the air. It pulled her out into the swamp as she struggled to free herself. The creature drew her toward its head, and its toothless mouth gaped open to receive her.

“Psst! Try it, you monssster! I’ll sssink my fangs into your ssstomach.” The viper coiled and uncoiled around her neck, slipping to each of the creature’s arms and sinking its fangs into them. But the creature was unaffected.

With cold slime sliding down her face, Oganna found it impossible to see what happened next. She heard something hiss in the trees and heard wings slap the air. The arms holding her thrashed. They held her sideways, upside down, or whichever other way they preferred. Then, quite suddenly, they released her. She felt herself falling and heard the creature’s arms slapping the water around her body in an attempt to snare her again.

As she hit the water and sank, she flailed her arms in an effort to free her nostrils from the slime that now suffocated her. A heavy object struck her on the back of her head, and she lost her strength. She could feel herself sinking deeper into the water, and she imagined with terror what the swamp’s inhabitants would do to her. They’d probably rip her apart and divvy her into portions, leaving nothing recognizable for her relations to recover.